Andrew Clifford has a slightly controversial blog post in which he makes this claim: real programmers don't test. Well, on further investigation, what he really says is that really good and experienced programmers don't have a separate testing step at the end. And even in that diluted form, I'm not sure I agree. My developers think of tests before they code, and they test as they go, but on large development projects (and some small tasks for that matter) I still have a tester take a run through the system to make sure there is nothing that we would cringe if the client were to find .

The Braidy Tester has a way of thinking that may scare you a bit and a huge list of tests that you need to run at the end in his "you are not done yet" lists for testers and developers. The first item on the developer list is the most important to me -- when you find a bug, ask yourself why it didn't turn up earlier. Why did we wait until we were 90% complete to test with their old data? Why did nobody print this before? Why has it been three months since anybody tried adding a customer record before using this screen? "Why" questions tend to hurt a bit, but they prevent pain in the future. And folks who test as they go, who test in their minds before they design or code, can fly through a "you are not done yet" list and say "yes I am!"

Kate